ABSTRACT
To complicate matters, as Lionel Gossman explains, in Romantic historiography, nature, the Orient, woman, the people, and the hidden past itself, are almost always metaphors of each other and of the oppressed and repressed in general. Important thematic linkages between Bage, Owenson and Scott are: the formalized discussion of religious difference, suspicion of slavery, and the specifically Muslim harem or zenana, and the use of shutters and veils to restrict access to sexual and other kinds of knowledge. Scott's negotiation of religious difference is related to his concerns about legitimacy in the widest sense. The Begum's political transgression is presented as a combination of gender-bending with racial and religious apostacy. Moreover, Scott employs both racial differences clearly marked by the body, and the intrusion of the British into contexts of cultural difference, to focus on the policing of female sexuality. The villains are presented as breaking gender boundaries by crossing cultural ones.
